Dearlyintrovert

Pride Month: My Story and on Feeling Like an Imposture

My Story:

For any of you who don't know: I'm asexual. I've been identifying as asexual for probably about a year now? I couldn't even tell you the exact moment I started identifying as asexual, whether in my mind or out loud. It was sort of just a gradual understanding ever since I first learned about the term asexual in college. For the longest time I didn't think I even was asexual because the definition of asexuality at the time wasn't incredibly clear and it took me a long time to realize what asexuality truly meant. At first I kept getting lost in the concept of "lack of sexual attraction toward others." Wait, does that mean I'm not allowed to find anyone cute? Because I definitely still find people cute. What does it even mean to not be sexually attracted toward others? Does that include noticing physical appearances? It wasn't until I learned about the differences in attraction—namely between sexual attraction and aesthetic attraction—that the picture started to become clearer and I began to understand more deeply what it truly meant to be sexually attracted to someone.

Once I broke down that distinction between aesthetic and sexual attraction, I actually found that I had more in common with asexuality than I thought. I've always been drawn to the idea of having a romantic partner to share and experience my life with, but to me, physical affection wasn't a required component for me to be happy with said partner. It's not at the top of my list, or even in my top 10—for me, it's always been about companionship. I want someone to go through life with. I want someone to go grocery shopping with when there's hardly anyone at the store and we have the place to ourselves. I want someone to travel with and have late nights with—to just have that one person in life who you don't mind spending every second with and who you know will always be your main supporter in life. I think that's something everyone wants in life, but here's the difference between me and a lot of other people: if you asked someone if they could go their whole life without having sex, most people would freak out, right? They couldn't imagine going a year without sex, let alone their entire life! Or even if you asked the question, how important is sex and physical intimacy in a relationship: most people are going to say they're at least a little important. Whereas if you were to ask me, "Okay, you can be in a relationship with the love of your life but you can never kiss or have sex—would you do it?" I would say: sign me up, this is basically my ideal scenario. Because I consider myself to be a relatively romantic person, but as far as physical affection/sexual desire goes, that's not at all a priority for me. It's not of dire importance. It's not even at the forefront of my mind. I just ... don't think or experience in those terms.

My mom could even tell you that I once said in a conversation, "Wouldn't it be sweet if I married someone and we lived in a house together but still had separate bedrooms?" I would even go on about these imaginary cute, thrilling moments me and my future hubby would have of bumping into each other in the hallway late at night going to the bathroom or coming downstairs the next morning and finding the other person sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal, and we'd still feel like a couplea teenagers in love. Meanwhile, my mom found all of this a bit weird and said, "Danielle... married couples sleep in the same bedroom. It's not a very healthy marriage if they're sleeping in separate rooms. Why wouldn't you want to sleep in the same bed?" Um, because, Mom, I hate sharing a bed with someone else (very true) and I like to stretch out. I am not about to share a bed with someone whose limbs and bad breath are gonna be all over me and interrupt my sleep, BYE. No, but in all seriousness, the real reason I didn't mind the thought of entertaining this separate bedroom scenario is because I'm not drawn to the idea of being entangled in bed with another person's warm, sweaty body. Nothing about that appeals to me, no matter how much I may love them.

And I feel like my whole life, I've been fed the idea that I'm supposed to love physical intimacy—cuddling with that boy you like, makeout scenes in movies, getting a hickey, sharing a shower with someone, and alllllll the different ways you can have sex and where and in what position. And not only am I not inately drawn to any of it... I just don't want to. Even just the sheer act of sexual objectification and noticing the other gender, I feel like it's something that I've always felt SO on the outside of my whole life. Like whenever friends and I would see these ~sexy photoshoots~ in magazines of our favorite celebs with their shirts off and six-pack abs and edgy, sexy stubble. Or—I don't know, man—literally any boy band ever. There's always this inevitable moment where we're supposed to ogle and go "Oh my god, he's so hot. Oof, that bod, that jawline. Jfc, he's just so sexy." But in these moments I always feel like there's something I'm missing out on? Like I'm not quite getting it? And I know I said earlier that I still had the capacity to find people cute, but it feels like in these moments, the focus is so much on sexuality and the body, which isn't something I can personally connect with. Listen, don't get me wrong: I find Brendon Urie to be, objectively, one of the most exquisite examples of the male gender. But do I fantasize about kissing him or having sex with him? No. And I think that's the difference between aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction. Objectively, I could study Brendon Urie like a painting all day, noting how beautiful and expressive his eyes are, how nice his hair looks, or how beaming and radiant his smile is. In terms of human beings, he's the equivalent of a chef's kiss. But that's where it ends with me. It's all in the quiet admiring and in noticing the careful details, much like you would a painting. Like, yes, I love the gentle brush strokes here and the use of color and texture, but does this painting awaken this inner carnal urge in me? No.

So when I say I view and experience the world in a different way than a lot of people, this is essentially what I'm talking about. And I think I've known for a long time... it's just taken me a while to be able to put a name to it and think about it in this way. There wasn't asexuality when I was in high school, so I didn't have anything to look to and compare my experiences with. You were either gay or straight. And for the longest time, I thought I was just straight, if only a little shy around boys and painfully bad at getting anyone to notice me. But the funny thing is: even when I had ~~plenty of~~ a few opportunities, I was still extremely uncomfortable with the idea of kissing someone and would somehow always find a way to sabotage my chances.

Boy: I really like hanging out with you...

Me: Yeah?

Boy: Yeah. Maybe we could...

Me: Well, would you look at the time...! kaybyeitwasnicemeetingyougottarun!

And then I would inevitably play the whole "Woe is me, why am I so awkward! Will I never fall in love? I'm going to be Forever Alone!" I was also just feeling really down about the fact that everyone else around me were getting into relationships and having boyfriends and first kisses and public displays of affection in the hallways and dates on Valentine's Day and I just felt like I was being left in the dust... which probably didn't help the whole feeling inadequate thing. I knew there was this thing I was missing out and falling behind on, and I increasingly became desperate to fit myself into it. It got to the point where every start of the year I would say to myself, "Okay, Danielle, this is the year. This is the year you kiss someone. You got this..." I would step into each school year with this goal in mind, and every school year would come and go, my goal remaining unmet until... I sort of just stopped keeping track? And when I look back on all of this, I can't help but think: Did I genuinely want to be kissed, or did I become convinced that I needed to be kissed just for the sake of having crossed this milestone and get the marker of "Never been kissed" off my back? I know there were definitely times where I did feel incredibly lonely and heartbroken at the thought that no one wanted me, that I couldn't have a special boy of my own to be romantic with.

But again, going back to the whole sexual vs. romantic thing, I don't think there was ever a moment where I could truly see myself kissing someone. I mean, of course everyone's going to be a bundle of nerves thinking about their first kiss. That's just part of being young and inexperienced. But there's also a little part of you that's excited and wants to, right? For me, I dreaded the idea. I went through the mechanics of kissing in my head—the positioning, the rhythm, how it would all feel, what all it would entail—and it all just didn't feel right for me. And when I say that, I don't mean that it felt wrong, like it's a shameful act and no one should do it or anything like that. I quite literally mean that it didn't feel right for me. It wasn't innate for me, this desire to kiss someone. It wasn't something I naturally gravitated toward nor felt like something I should push myself to do if I truly didn’t want to. And the more I think about it now, there was always this sort of pattern whenever I ended up liking someone. Everything would be going great, we’d be getting to know each other more and more with every time we spent together, and it would all feel so fluttery and fun and carefree, just as it always is in those beginning stages of a crush. But there would always be this moment as things gradually progressed, where I’d have this thought gnawing at the back of my head, “Shoot… we’re gonna eventually have to kiss, aren’t we?” Like, this is what crushes inevitably build up to, right? This is the direction we’re headed if things keep going on like this? And then one final thought after realizing all of this: Damnit. Because this is the moment I always dreeeead when I’m developing a crush and getting to know someone, this moment where all the fun and shenanigans and silly conversations stop and where it’s meant to start getting more serious and physical, and before you know it all we’re gonna be doing is making out all the time, which I wouldn’t find gratifying at all. I wouldn’t find it a valuable use of my time. It would just be this uncomfortable thing I’d have to keep doing with this person because… obligation? Because that’s what couples are eventually supposed to do—supposed to want to do—even though I would much rather spend my time continuing having interesting, meaningful conversations with this person and having fun with them, sans kissing.

Like, I just… I don’t see how kissing is very fun or how long you’re supposed to kiss them for or what the end goal is..? And this is definitely, definitely where asexuality comes to feel like you’re navigating the world through a different language. Objectively, of course I can understand why people like kissing and sex. I’m not a robot, after all. I studied and minored in sexuality studies (among other things). I watch shows and movies and read books where there’s romance—and I even root for these romances! I love watching and reading about people falling in love and developing these sweet romances and waiting for the two main characters to eventually profess their love to one another. So while I can totally understand it from an objective standpoint—and from that of someone who’s just a sucker for cute romances—on a personal level, I cannot connect with the concept of kissing and sex in the context of dating. It is very much like this language barrier, because I don’t see kissing/sex as a necessity for me in my romantic endeavors. It’s not even at the forefront of my mind until the societal expectation of it dons on me, that this is the natural course in 99% of relationships and that couples are supposed to want to kiss and have sex. And it feels like my downfall every time I remember this—that this is always going to be my downfall in entering any relationship. It’s always going to reach a point where I’ll have to explain to my partner why I don’t want to kiss them and then we’ll be at an impasse because, let’s be real here, what guy wants to be in a relationship with a girl where they don’t kiss or have sex? That probably sounds like a death sentence to them or something. And besides, kissing and sex are supposed to be part of the whole point of a relationship, right? What else is the point of a relationship if you don’t express physical affection toward your partner? Isn’t the absence of that more or less just a deep friendship?

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about this, too: Is what I’m describing here—my ideal relationship, sans kissing/sex—just a Mega Ride-or-Die Friendship with a guy? And after much contemplation, the answer that I’ve come to is no. At least I don’t think so. Because even though I have no interest in kissing or sex, there’s still a part of me that dreams of being someone else’s special person one day. And to me, that doesn’t look like a guy having me as a really close friend, along with a bunch of other people he considers to be close friends. I want to be, like, the top of the ranks, you know? I want to be his ultimate #1, his other half, the person he loves and trusts more than anyone else. And then I thought about if we were hanging out together and he showed up with someone else and was like, “Oh hey, this is my significant other.” Would I instantly feel jealous? Heck yes. And this isn’t coming from a place of possessiveness or, He can’t hang out with anyone but me. It’s that someone else would be his special person where I would want that to be my role and my relationship with him. Just like if you were casually dating someone who you were really starting to like and they showed up with another person they were casually dating. You’d feel a mixture of hurt, betrayal, and a healthy dose of jealousy, right? Like someone gave you a good blow to the stomach, because all you want is for this person to see you as their number one? It’s the same thing. Even though I don’t have the capacity for sexual desire/physical affection, I still have that component in me, that tug in my heart just as so many others do, who all simply want to love and be loved by someone else.

This is what feels so frustrating about dating for me: I’d have to explain this to someone, at some point, every time I entered a new relationship. There will always be that moment where I’ll have to have The Talk with them, where I say: “Yeeeah, I don’t really like kissing? Or having sex? But I still really want to develop a romantic relationship with you…” I'd then inevitably have to bat away questions like Are you religious? Are you trying to become a nun? Are you sure you’re really into me? Were you sexually abused/assaulted? Is this why you’re like this? And it sucks because it just feels like every romantic relationship I enter is going to be doomed from the start, so why bother at all? Even though at the end of the day I want the same thing as everyone else, to be loved and have a special person, but it’s just this one thing —this one G-D thing—that makes me different and that makes dating that much more of a challenge. At this point, I’ve pretty much accepted the very real possibility that I might never end up with someone in my lifetime. It just might not happen, and I’m learning to be okay with it. And most days I am, because I know now that a romantic partner does not a fulfilling life make. I’ve learned that love and romance are not the be-all end-all to a happy life, and most of the time it doesn’t even faze me that I might not end up with someone. But every now and then (like now) it catches up with me and I have to struggle with going on with my life while I see others around me in happy, long-term relationships with their soulmates, and I feel so. So. Lonely.

Feeling Like an Imposture

With all of that being said, when it comes to this time of year, to Pride Month, I feel… uncertain as to whether I’m welcome or whether I should even consider myself a part of the LGBTQ+ community. I feel something akin to slapping on a name tag and joining a party I wasn’t invited to, and I think a lot of that is due to how asexuals are perceived in the LGBTQ+ community overall. As it stands, the LGBTQ+ community is still verrry hesitant toward asexuals. It’s definitely improved leaps and bounds over these past few years in terms of inclusion and recognizing asexuals as part of the community, but the tension is still very much there. And I mean, as an identity, asexuality is still pretty new. There are obscure mentions of aseuxality over the course of time, but it wasn’t until like 2001 when David Jay brought asexuality into the mainstream and founded AVEN that people really started to hear the term asexuality and what it meant, and even more recently (like 2013--) that it’s spread across social media and online LGBTQ+ discourse and now it’s not uncommon at all to find people identifying as asexual on their profiles. So it’s still a pretty new identity in the grand scheme of things, and it’s a pretty radical concept—the idea that someone could not be sexually attracted to anybody. I think that’s also what’s behind a lot of the skepticism toward aces (asexuals) in the LGBTQ+ community. Like, of course you have men loving men, women loving women… but wait, you don’t want to have sex with anyone? Okay… what’s even the point? And I mean, I do understand a lot of where that hostility comes from, especially as a group that’s faced endless oppression and hatred and bigotry and shaming and violence. So when you have a pride parade and everyone celebrating being gay, and all of a sudden a group of asexuals rolls up being like, “Yeah, we don’t have sex, WOO!” of course that’s going to be met with stern looks and people probably thinking we’re some anti-LGBTQ+ group that’s all for celibacy and ~purity~ and all that. And I think that’s 90% of the issue: people misunderstanding what asexuality is. It has nothing to do with morals. It has nothing to do with religion or celibacy. It’s that some people just do not experience sexual attraction toward others, which in itself is another form of queerness and existing outside of heteronormativity, since heteronormativity operates under the framework that cisgendered men and women have sex, and through this they continue to reflect the “rightful” gender roles of the dominant male and the submissive female (and like… a billion other things since heteronormativity is kind of a loaded subject, but I’ll spare you that thesis). I feel like a lot of the time people view the LGBTQ+ community as just being “the gay community” and that’s all there is to it. But if more people viewed it in relation to heteronormativity, I feel like a lot more would begin to understand it better and on a much larger scale and see that queer encompasses so many things. Anything that exists outside of heteronormativity is considered queer. That includes those outside the gender binary, those who are not cisgendered, those who are not straight, those who are intersex… and yes, those who do not participate in the framework that men and women are supposed to (want to) have sex, AKA asexuals!

I can say all of this in my head over and over. Heck, I’ve written the essay! But it still doesn’t stop that little voice in my head from saying, You’re not part of this community. You’re an outsider, an imposture. You’re basically just a straight person putting on the label of ace just to be cool and belong somewhere. I think a lot of what contributes to this is how long it took me to come into my asexual identity. For so long, I didn’t have a name to put to it. For the longest time, it was just disguised as me being a straight person who… never got kissed or had sex, and whenever I was asked this, I would just get all sheepish and self-depracating and be all, “Oh, you know *shrug* It just hasn’t happened. Lol #foreveralone.” Then once I got into college and started learning more about asexuality, it was sort of this veeeery slow realization of, Wait… that’s a thing? Again, it took me a long time to fit asexuality into what I was feeling, since I didn’t quite understand the definition of “sexually attracted to,” because I knew in the past I had found certain people to be aesthetically attractive. But the more I learned about asexuality and read posts on Tumblr and compared it to my experiences and actually listened to myself and what I really desired (not what I felt pressured to desire), I found that I was on the asexual spectrum, and it took me until last year to fully embrace it and to identify as asexual. And it felt good—after years of wondering what was wrong with me and why I was more prudish than everyone around me and why I kept sabotaging opportunities for myself—to finally put a name to it and be able to say, Yes, I am this. And I feel like ever since then, everything about who I am, and why I am the way I am, has made SO MUCH MORE SENSE when I put it in the context of asexuality. It’s seriously been the most validating thing ever.

But because I came into this identity late and it was this long, drawn-out learning experience before it took me to feel comfortable enough to settle with this identity, I feel like… I haven’t earned the right to be part of the LGBTQ+ community? Like, some days it very much feels like I just stumbled upon this label, thought to myself, “Woah, this is a thing? Huh… yeah, I can get with that” and sort of just placed it on myself and moseyed on over to the LGBTQ+ community. I didn’t feel like I suffered enough or went through enough hardship and adversity like so many others in this community have, to be able to call myself part of this community myself. It felt very convenient and very easy to just call myself asexual. Like, it sort of just fell into my lap, I thought about it for a good year or so, then I put it on and ~voila. It wasn’t a very arduous journey for me. So it just feels almost… unfair that I can easily put this label on myself and go on about my day whereas so many others in the community have faced so much more difficulty to get to where they are today. And I know this is a discussion a lot of the time in the LGBTQ+ community as well, about whether certain identities in the community are “oppressed enough” or whether you even have to struggle a certain amount to be considered a part of the community. Like, on the one hand I totally get it. Generations have suffered so much for their identity to get us to where we are today, and there are people who still face so much hatred and bigotry for their existence. Yet other people can easily call themselves a part of the community without having “worked” for it. But at the same time… who says that you have to suffer to be a part of the community? Why is that a prerequisite? If you haven’t gone through as much hardship as someone else… that doesn’t make you not bi or not gay or not pan.

I think another part in regard to the asexuality thing is that… it’s very easy to pass as just a straight person, especially if you happen to be asexual and heteromantic (romantically attracted to the opposite gender). Het aces are especially looked down upon in the LGBTQ+ community, because to most, they’re “basically just straight people who don’t have sex.” Whoop-de-doo, right? And that’s very much the case for me. If you didn’t know any better, I’m basically straight—I just happen to also not like kissing or sex, which someone isn’t going to flat-out ask me most of the time, so it never gets brought up. And since my social/dating life is pretty much nonexistent at this point, most of the time my asexuality doesn’t come into play. I wake up, I go to work for 8 hours, I come home. I do little things here and there on the weekends. That is basically my life right now. And because I’m not dating right now, most of the time I don’t even have to think about being ace because I’m not running into opportunities where my asexual identity would be relevant. Does that make sense? So on a day-to-day basis, being asexual is… pretty easy. I just go about my day, carrying on as usual. And it feels wrong that it can be this easy, y’know? Like I can just go on as a normal person, my identity mostly being a non-issue, and yet still have the nerve to consider myself a part of the community. This is where I start to feel like I’m nothing more than this big imposture, like I’m sliding my way into this community ever so conveniently and calling myself a part of something when I have no right to. When on the outside I appear just a basic, straight girl.

Other Ace Things
It doesn't help that there are times here and there where I, by reflex, sort of just play along and go with the straight, allosexual agenda. Like when a friend shows me a picture or a movie poster of some attractive celebrity or even someone they're going on a date with, I'll go, Oooh, he's cuuute! even though they do nothing for me and I'm just saying it to... say it. But on the outside, it appears that I'm just your basic straight girl. Or I might even swoon over someone *cough* Brendon Urie *cough* and make a comment like, "Ooh, he is SO ATTRACTIVE!" And yet again, I come across as a typical straight person even though in my head I'm desperately screaming, "I mean, AESTHETICALLY. Please don't use this to invalidate my identity!" I think that's one of the hardest things, is constantly feeling like I need to put disclaimers after everything I say, just on the off chance that someone will misunderstand me and I'll accidentally invalidate my own identity..? Even though I clearly know myself, more than anyone else thankyouverymuch. But no one else knows that, and it just sucks that you have to walk on eggshells when it comes to yourself, just so people don't misinterpret something and call you out as not being queer enough. And I feel like sometimes people are waiting for me to do that—to "accidentally" reveal a part of myself that explains away my asexuality entirely just so they can go, "Ah-HAAA, you're not really queer!" or "OHH, that explains why you're like this, because you're a prude / had a bad kissing experience when you were younger / are inexperienced / etc. etc." Because it can't just be because I'm like this all on my own, right? There has to be some past event or some part of my personality or something that contributed to me being asexual.
And then it's just this whole other can of worms when you want to be represented in media, when you want to see yourself in books and movies and TV shows. In the age of sexual revolution and sex positivity, where we're pushing for sexuality to be more normalized and presented in media (which I also think is great!), it's hard when you're over here like, "Yeah, I'd just... I'd really like a relationship where they don't have sex!" *cricket chirps* Or even when you're trying to express how oversexualized the world is and how much everything revolves around sex and how it's everywhere—TV, movies, advertisements, etc. I am of the opinion that, yes, we should make sex more accepted and normalized and depicted in healthy ways in the media. But I also absolutely believe there is such a thing as too much and that we can be oversaturated with sex as a culture. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that. But when you try saying that as an asexual, it can reeeally veer into the waters of sex-shaming and coming across that way. And this is where I start to feel like not only do I not belong in the LGBTQ+ community but I don't belong in feminism either. As a movement that is oftentimes filled to the brim with sexuality and ~becoming one with your body~ it's easy to feel on the outside of so much of the discourse when you don't connect in that way. I think a lot of the time, it's common for asexuals to sort of feel like they're on their own little island. From the start, they don't fit in with the narrative of typical straight people, so they try to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community... and are inevitably met with comments like, Ugh, you're not welcome here, sex shamer."
So if they don't fit in with straight people, and they aren't welcomed in the LGBTQ+ community... where are aces supposed to go, exactly? And if they argue for more representation in the media where sex isn't at the center, or more relationships that don't focus on sex (where feminism fights for the exact opposite), can asexuals ever fully feel a part of feminism? It all just gets to be so much and it's this ongoing struggle of figuring out where you belong and fighting to carve a space for yourself and have discussions relating to your experiences and your identity, yet also constantly being aware of how you come across and trying to be mindful and not have your message be misconstrued. It's exhausting to even think about, which is why I'm not always super vocal about being ace because there are so many ways it could be misinterpreted and people could accuse me of not being queer enough or not being feminist enough and sometimes I just feel like it would be better to keep my mouth shut rather than fight against the tide and try (and most likely fail) at trying to justify myself and my identity, or if I even deserve to have an identity.

Except no.

If there's anything I've learned now...

It's that I do deserve to have an identity.

My identity is as real and valid as any other.

I've earned my right to carve a space out for myself.

No matter what anyone thinks—even myself

I. Am. Enough.

* * *

Note: This started out as me needing to vent about feeling like an imposture during Pride Month but grew and grew into essentially a tell-all about me being asexual altogether, and eeeeeeeverything that goes with it. I pretty much covered everything. I'm sure there are little things here and there that I didn't mention or go over but that I still face from time to time regarding being ace. But for the most part, I got a lot out that I'd been holding in and ruminating in my head for a long time—and it felt really good to finally think all of this aloud. If anyone made it to the very end, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to read all of this. I hope you got to know me a little bit better and that you learned some things! I ultimately just hope that people walk away from this knowing a bit more about what it means to be asexual, but I implore you to continue learning and listening and educating yourself about the asexual identity (AVEN is a good place to start!)

**Disclaimer: Please do not take this as the be-all end-all to Being Asexual 101. Asexuality is such a varied identity that exists across a spectrum, with so many people identifying as ace in myriad different ways. I'm just one story of manymanymanymany!

**Also, please do not mistake this entry as being:
—Against the LGBTQ+ community or Pride Month
— "~Not like other girls" (*gag*)
—Against sex or anyone who has sex